EXCLUSIVE: Sophie Kasaei Opens Up On Dealing With Anxiety In The Geordie Shore House

Geordie Shore is now in its 17th series, but if you thought you already knew everything about the famed reality show, then what you might not realise is that there's a team of psychiatrists on hand to help the cast if they ever need them.

Being a reality star might sound like a dream career for loads of people, but some of the Geordie Shore cast often look to both their co-stars and mental health experts for whenever they are struggling.

And chatting exclusively to PRETTY52 on the launch of the latest series, Sophie Kasaei has just opened up on how she deals with her own anxiety in the house.

The 28-year-old explained: "We get to speak to psychiatrists [...] if we ever need them.

"Mental health is a really important thing. I do suffer from anxiety and my mam suffers really bad with her mental health. She goes through a really hard time. I do think that there should be a lot more awareness out there. There should be a lot more help.

Credit: Instagram/Sophie Kasaei

"I think with us being in the public eye, we're at an advantage where we can speak about it and tell people that it's alright, and it's okay to not be okay. I just think that people do try and hide mental illness and it's best to speak about it.

"Mental illness it is an illness and if we speak about it there is help out there but people just hide it and we're all ashamed to say we're got anxiety or whatever's going on in their minds."

"It's a really important thing to us and I think speaking about it is the best help you can get."

Credit: MTV

Speaking about the support they give each other, Sophie continued: "Ah god, we're sisters. We've lived in a house with each other for so many years, and not only that we've traveled the world together, we've done press together.

"The best support system we've got is each other."

While being a reality star with millions of 'gram followers gives you a platform to raise awareness of mental health, it also opens you up to cruel trolls who will happily have a go at you for near enough any reason.

Sophie, who was a member of the original Geordie Shore cast, added that she has developed a thick skin to keyboard warriors, and sometimes offers up advice to her newer cast mate, Abbie Holborn whenever she's targeted.

Credit: Instagram/Sophie Kasaei

The reality beauty explained: "My opinion would be just rise above it. There's a lot more positive comments than negative. You might get 100 comments on your photo, about 96 of them will be positive, about four of them will be negative.

"We need to thank people for being more positive than negative. The more we talk about negativity and trolls, the more people are going to do it so we need to stop giving them publicity."

Abbie added: "Most of the people who do troll as well are not like the younger generation.

"It's mainly the young people who are being the positive ones and that's the kind of audience you want to look at."

Fans of the show will remember that Sophie had a hiatus from the reality programme, meaning she's seen first hand how trolling has changed over the years.

Credit: Instagram/Abbie Holborn

"When we first started Geordie Shore, it was more Facebook, and I think Facebook can be absolutely vile. Honestly, Facebook was hard to delete comments and Instagram it's a lot more easier now," recalled the Newcastle native.

"You can get rid of and block people now, but whenever MTV posted things on Facebook, we couldn't delete them because we weren't in control.

"It was hard then and I remember the news in the papers was front page saying how disgusting Geordie Shore was, so when I remember stuff I remember it being a lot worse."

She added: "I've just learnt to grow thick skin. You learn to deal with it, you learn to ignore it. At the end of the day I've got amazing friends, amazing family that tell us that I look great every single day."

The reality stalwart also offers pearls of wisdom to her co-star Abbie, urging her to delete any social media reactions to cruel comments.

Credit: Instagram/Abbie Holborn

She recalled: "[Sophie] told me not to give them the satisfaction or the reaction so I had to delete me little rant."

Rachel Andrews

Rachel Andrews is an NCTJ trained Junior Journalist at PRETTY52. She specialises in Fashion Journalism, and has experience at a range of online and print publications. She is a Journalism and English language graduate of Kingston University, London, and joined the team in 2017. Contact her - rachel.andrews@pretty52.com